Irony is the Shackles of Youth

West Wing: Peters Projection

Oh man, my co-worker showed me this today. I almost hurt myself laughing. The thing is, changing the projection (or flipping north and south) on a map, really does generate this response from people. Most people so use to seeing the shape of continents on a Mercator map, that when they see something different, it blows their minds.

Other than that, it is a really good explanation of both the Mercator and Peters projection. Along with giving the most common argument of why Peters is superior (according to some people).

As an aside, if you are looking at a map of the US and want to know if it's the Mercator projection, just look at the northern border with Canada. The border between the two countries (with some exceptions) follows the 49th parallel north. In a map using a Mercator projection, the line with be flat because Mercator makes all latitude/longitude parallel, straight lines. If it's curved, then some other projection is being used. There are other projections that produce straight latitude/longitude lines, but Mercator is the most common.

And now you know.

Today I filled out my census form for myself and miome. At least for the next 10 years, I'll count for something. Although I admit, I kind of wish the amount of funding I represent was going to a much cooler state for the next 10 years instead of Virginia.

The last time the census was taken, I would have been counted when my mom filled out her Census. This is a first for me. And given how much I use Census data, I am unreasonably excited about this.

Dear Google Maps,

Despite what you may think, 7-11's are not grocery stores.

No love,
Tsaiko

I actually got to see the poster presentation for these maps at the national meeting and talk with the presenters. It's an awesome (and quirky) idea.

Here's an article about how the researchers did this for both Nevada and the whole US. Here are copies of the US maps.

Poster presentation is over. There was a terrifying moment when I realized that one of the people talking with me about my poster was a guy who I'm siting in my thesis. Dammit, I didn't want people who understand what I'm doing reading that thing! Luckily, he was very, very nice. I was kind of overshadowed by the guy who set up near me. His poster topic? "The Spatial Distribution of the Seven Deadly Sins in America." I did manage to snag a CD of the work with all the awesome maps. I might see if I can find a copy of the study on-line to share. It's really interesting.

Thanks for all the well wishes. Now that that's over, I can actually enjoy the rest of my week in Las Vegas.

My internship is driving me absolutely crazy.

Early on in the process, I talked to Manager 1 (M1) about a GIS database I had found that would be useful to us. This database was also mentioned by the people who contracted with us for this project as something they had already done with an early version of the data and we might want to look at it when we did parcel data for them. Somehow M1 became convinced that we were going to update this database, despite my repeated explanations. Finally, I managed to make him understand that this database was for reference only and was not going to be updated.

Or so I thought.

Project gets handed over to Manager 2 (M2). Project goes merrily on its way. Four days before the end of the project, M2 is double checking the proposal to make sure we have everything done. And finds out that one of the things we said we'd do is update the database. She emailed me asking for a progress on it, and I told her it was never supposed to be updated, updating it would practically be duplicating what we are already doing in another database, and finally even if I wanted to, there's no way it could be done in four days.

M2's response? "If they want the data so bad, they can get it from the other file we're sending them."

I heart M2. ^^

I find it highly amusing that I'm downloading Maui.

Yes, I mean the Hawaiian Island. ^^

Miome: This "Final Project" boss is harder than you thought.
Tsaiko: Yeah, he's really kicking my ass.
Miome: You should have leveled up more before tackling him.
Tsaiko: LOL.

In other news, the map for my final project corrupted yet again, leaving me to believe there's something wrong with one of my data layers or the path names to the files (searching on the internet suggests that anyway). The only problem is that it won't even open the map so I can fix the path names. Sigh. Will be rebuilding it again on Monday. The good part of this is every time I rebuild it, I refine it even more and solve another problem. Two steps forward and one step back.

EDIT: Oh course body, I would love to have my period right now. Thanks. -_-

I got my mid-term back for one of my classes. I didn't do as well as I'd hoped. Granted, I didn't do badly but... I thought I'd done better. Turns out I completely screwed up one of the questions and that really hurt my grade. I got above a hundred (yeah for extra credit!) on my assignments in the same class, so that will bring up my mid-term grade. I'm still disappointed though.

In other news, still don't have a laptop. miome has been battling with Dell about getting a replacement. The warranty on my laptop was supposed to be next day support, but that hasn't happened. Some of the Dell support people have been complete morons. I've been borrowing Miome's computer for over two weeks now. This is getting ridiculous.

Not much writing has been done for the above reason. I like Miome's computer, but the keyboard doesn't feel right. It's distracting. That and I just don't have the time in between school, work, and other projects.

I finished my crocheted scarf and have started working on a matching hat. After this I think I'm going to try and find a fingerless glove pattern to work on. I might even have enough yarn to do them all in the same color. Yeah for matching set! Someone expressed an interest in seeing it when I was done. Was it skylark97? If you still want to see what it looks like, I'll take a picture once I'm done with the hat (which is taking 1/10 the amount of time).

Finally, I spent most of the day fighting with the server where the aerial photos I use for work are stored on. I could get half the picture to load and the rest I couldn't. It sucked. I wound up getting so frustrated I stopped working an hour early. I'll have to make that up at some point during the week. Sigh.

Okay, someone convince me not to do this map of South America in shades of purple with pink stars for the capitals.

I HAVE BEEN WORKING ON THIS FOR TOO LONG WHEN I THINK THAT THAT IS A GOOD IDEA.

Still don't have renter's insurance. I'm going to call the agency today and find up what's going on. I need it by Sunday.

I did get my Social Security card. THANK YOU miome! I need to find a place to get stamps so I can send off Father's Day cards.

I'm going to be trained today on digitizing maps. The guy training me sent me an email with an attachment of file for me to download. Problem? My jump Drive is 128 MB and these files zipped at 136MB. o_O I had forgotten just how huge the files you work with in GIS are. I'll probably have to get a bigger jump drive at Best Buy this weekend when I go to get a new phone. that'll also give me an excuse to go to home Depot and pick up some stuff for gardening on the back porch. HEHEHEHE.

I found my jump drive and am now able to copy pictures/files off the internet. I have no storage space in my account that is not for email. That sucks. Everything will have to be saved to my jump drive. Speaking of saving things, while I was deleting off some old files to clear up space I found a copy of an AU I'd written from my days in the Digimon fandom. After looking through my memories it seems I already posted a bunch of what I had written. I kind of miss the Phoenix Davis and Dragon Ken.

Okay, I'm going to putz around here until just before 10:00am. Then I'm off to training.